A Hawaii couple whose family expanded with the birth of quintuplets will spend Christmas at home instead of in the hospital.
Marcie and Ray Dela Cruz’s 11-week-old quintuplets were all healthy enough to be released from Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children just in time for Christmas.
The babies — a girl and identical quadruplet boys — were delivered premature Oct. 10, when Marcie was a day shy of 29 weeks pregnant. At the time, doctors expected the babies would need to remain in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit for up to three months to allow their lungs to fully develop and grow.
Two of the babies were able to go home Dec. 13; another went home Monday. The final two were released Thursday afternoon.
“It’s definitely the best Christmas gift we could have gotten, to have them home for Christmas,” Marcie Dela Cruz, 37, told reporters on Christmas Eve from the hospital before the babies were loaded into the family’s newly purchased 15-passenger van.
The Pauoa couple had conceived their first son, 2-year-old Makaio, through in vitro fertilization in 2012, and had set aside several frozen embryos. In April, Dela Cruz had two of the embryos transferred in hopes of giving Makaio a sibling.
The couple initially thought they were having twins. Then one of the two embryos split in half, and later in half again.
The boys — whose names are Kapena, Kaolu, Keahi and Kupono — have each been assigned a color to help tell them apart and wear tiny color-coded cloth wristbands. The girl is named Kamalii.
Dela Cruz said the family has been busy preparing to have all five babies home, but she tries not to over-think things.
“It can tend to be stressful if I think about every little detail that needs to be done,” she said. “So we’re just kind of going with the flow and just making sure that they have the essentials. They have diapers, they have their baths and they can eat, and the rest of it is just loving up on them.”
“I’m following her lead,” Dad added.
With help from Marcie’s mom, Dana Cameros, the family has been sticking to a feeding and sleeping routine for the babies who were sent home earlier.
“We get up and we change their diapers, just like they were doing in the (neonatal intensive care unit) — we’re keeping that same routine — and then I heat up the bottles and each of us holds a baby, feed the babies, burp them and then they go right back to sleep,” Marcie Dela Cruz said. “So when they sleep, we sleep. And then a few hours later we get up and do it all over again.”
She said she’s looking forward to being their mom.
“They’re the mommies that the babies know,” Dela Cruz said of the intensive care unit’s nurses and specialists who have been caring for the quintuplets around the clock. “It’s kind of bittersweet to take them all away from what they’ve known for the past two months. But they’re my babies, so I can now be their mommy.”
The quintuplets, who each weighed less than 3 pounds at birth, now weigh between 5 and 8 pounds, and are Hawaii’s first surviving set of quintuplets.
“We didn’t set out to make history. We were just blessed with these babies, and they’re doing so great,” Dela Cruz said. “We’re taking it a day at a time. That’s all we can do.”
Dr. Charles Neal, medical director of Kapiolani’s neonatal intensive care unit, said, “It’s just amazing to see this happen and to see the success. … The thing on everybody’s mind in our (neonatal intensive care unit) was just get them the best outcome possible, and I think that’s what we did.”
Both parents are taking time off from their jobs — mom is a corporate trainer with American Savings Bank and dad is a roofer — to raise their children.
An online fundraising account set up earlier this year is still receiving donations to help the family with medical expenses and supplies. The page has raised a little over $6,500 so far. To donate, visit gofundme.com/adka4p6c.
Dela Cruz also said two Oahu businesses — Keiki o ka Aina in Kalihi and Kapaa Auto Body in Kailua — have agreed to accept donations of baby supplies. Monetary donations can also be made at any American Savings Bank branch.
